The present invention relates to the generation of monoclonal antibodies and their use in identifying or characterizing human renal cancer antigens. This is a useful diagnostic tool in the detection of renal cancer as well as the study of the nature of renal cancer. Immunofluorescent or enzymatic tagging agents can be bound to the highly specific antibodies using normal procedures, as required for indexing methods. Cytotoxic agents can also be bound to the highly specific antibodies to produce so called "magic bullet" type therapeutic agents which selectively destroy the cells with which the specific antibody binds.
We recently described our initial analysis of cell surface antigens of human malignant melanoma identified by mouse monoclonal antibodies (Abs)(Dippold et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 77, 6114-6118 (1980)). This invention relates to a comparable analysis of human renal cancer.